Saturday, 20 May 2017

Magnetising Aradus Soldier/Sentinel

My latest commission was to assemble and magnetise a Skorne Aradus Soldier/Sentinel.

I had not magnetised a warbeast before so I was interested to see how it would turn out.
Warbeasts having more natural and curved shapes they can often be more in need of gap filling at the joints you want to be magnetised.



The claw arms I drilled into with a 1mm drill bit to make a pilot hole then drilled in with a 3mm drill bit. Before gluing any magnet check, check and triple check that they are all the same polarity! 
I used 3mm x 1mm magnets for the claw arms.


Left and right shoulder magnets drilled into the torso. I did a small amount of gap filling with green stuff where the body comes together in it three main parts.



The tail for the Sentinel seemed like a 3mm magnet would not be enough so I used a 5mm x 2mm magnet for the magnet inside the back half of the body and the Sentinel's tail. The Soldiers tail is much smaller so I just used a 3mm x 1mm magnet.



Here it is set up as a Sentinel


And here as a Soldier. 

The thing I learnt about on this one was that the claw arms on the Soldier are really pushing the limit of what a 3mm magnet can hold. I found you have to push the arm into place rather than let the power of the magnet pull the arm into place as with the Sentinels arms.

If there was room in the arm piece I would like to have used a 5mm magnet but there wasn't the space.

Even with this the arms hold on well enough that I can shake the model gently and the arms stay on and violent shaking only makes one arm fall off. I'm calling that a win! 

I'm glad I used 5mm magnets for the Sentinels tail it is quite a heavy piece that has a high center of gravity so I doubt it would stay on with a smaller magnet.

Its worth mentioning that the client didn't want the head magentised he picked the one he liked the look of best and its glued on, but it could easily be magnetised with a 3mm magnet. 



If you would like me to magnetise something for you drop me an email at
thomasgbell84@googlemail.com
(I'm based in the UK)